it was the
"lightest
work I ever did and best pay.Have
worked at housework, done clerical work, and as a telephone operator.Had to do heavy lifting when I checked
orders in the drug company; filled a man's place at $15 per week, while men
beside me got twice that.Do you
wonder I appreciate being treated as well and paid just the same as a
man?"

"Keep the Girls off
the Cars":

Woman is God's most
tender flower, made to blossom and to bear,

To keep our homes, raise
our children, and our jobs & sorrows share.

She was made by God the
weaker, like a vine on man to lean;

She was meant to work
like her nature, tender, sweet & clean;

But when the Railway
Kings for greed and gain would cover womanhood with
scars;

1918 govt study of 97
metal-working plants: 64 report that productivity of female workers equal to or
greater than men;

Auto factory: woman with
one week experience doubled production rate of man next to her; "After
endeavoring to equal her speed for a few days, the man quit and was replaced by
a woman who is now very nearly the equal of the first."

Gear-making plant: women
15 to 25% more productive than men in drilling & sandblasting metal
parts;

Munitions
plant: women 25 to 50% more productive than men working drill presses and
milling machines;

Radcliffe student
studying at Cambridge volunteered: "every English girl worth her salt has
chucked everything to help in the war, and if I were to sit tight at college,
continuing my research on fossil botany of all things, getting the benefit of
their sacrifices, it would look like the height of selfishness."

Adventure:

Siberia - Red Cross
work;

Head nurse: "to be
in the front ranks in this most dramatic even and to be in the first group of
women ever called for duty with the US Army is all too much good fortune for
any one person."

Chance to feel useful:
"It isn't exactly an alluring prospect to be in the backwoods of Russia
for months with only 2 English speaking people, to run an infectious hospital,
but it will be rather fun."

telephone operator:
"I was so afraid they would locate us in the western part of France far
away from the front.I much
preferred to be as near the lines as possible, the most interesting place of
all."

Women’s colleges
commission special units;

1917 Smith College
– 50 graduates;

Army & Navy Nurse
Corps - over 10,000 female nurses;

"Don't tell me that
women can't do as much, stand as much, and be as brave as men."

US War Dept refused;
French accepted, women run hundred-bed hospital for soldiers &
refugees;

Army Signal Corps -over
200 women in Europe

Woman's Telephone Unit -
"Soldiers of the Switchboard";

"I recommend
telephone service for making you feel that you are a real part of the
army.When Pershing can't talk to
British prime minister Lloyd George unless you make the connection, you feel
you are helping a bit - it was fun."

air raids, shelling,
poison gas;

Over 300 American women
killed overseas;

War ended Nov.
1918;

Penn RR: "In the
stress of affairs during the war, the temporary employment of women became an
absolute necessity.We appreciate
what the women have done for us in the past months, but men must be reinstated
for the good of all and women should lend a willing obedience to that
fact."

Santa Fe RR fired
married
women to "protect the sanctity of the home."

"We are women that
needed the work very much - one woman has her aged father to support, another a
small son, and I support my disabled sister.We are respectable but poor; we like our jobs very much and
hope you will place us back at the shop."

Detroit Women
Conductors' Association: "It is our purpose to permanently see the right
of women to be employed as conductors."

Anna Shaw: "Why
should we have men decide for us what is good or bad for our morals &
health?We are adults.We women have a right to ask that we
shall be free to serve in the capacity for which we are fitted, and these women
in Cleveland on the streetcars have proven themselves able to do the
work."

military refused to
recognize Army Nurse Corps or Signal Corps women as veterans;

Nurse Mary Roberts
Rinehart: "The most tragic discovery of all to any woman is that she is
not needed.Brutal as it sounds,
the great war came as a boon to millions of women, and its end came as a
tragedy.Once more, they were no
longer needed."